Journey to the Sea: Part 2

 I woke up in the rainforest, on the high bank of the Bogachiel River. Granola in cold milk with a cup of steaming hot earl grey tea to start the day. I packed up camp, hiked out, and drove west towards the Elwha River. The last time I had been there was in the summer of 2014, on a break from my fieldwork in Alaska, and just after the Glines Canyon Dam had been breached. At the time, this was the largest dam removal project in the world, allowing the river to flow freely all the way from its headwaters in the Olympics to the sea, for the first time in over a hundred years. Kyle, my boyfriend at the time, and I snuck through a chain link fence in order to get a glimpse of the results of this monumental event. 

The breach in Glines Canyon Dam. Photo credit to Kyle Anderson.

The Elwha River draining through a century of sediment accumulated behind the dam.

Ten years later, when I returned to the river I learned that it had taken out a big section of road, so you could only drive to within a few miles of the old dam site. From there, you could hike or bike up a bypass trail and the remaining road into the watershed. Lucky me, I had brought a mountain bike with me!

Bike-passing the wild and free Elwha River.

Biking up an abandoned road felt like a surreal trip through the set of a post-apocalyptic movie. Maybe it was just spring, but an old visitor center with a collection of buildings for housing park service employees and maintenance equipment looked abandoned with the flagpole unadorned and winter debris untouched in the parking areas.

A dream of a world where cars have been abandoned.

I climbed up the steep road to the top of the dam, and left my bike leaning against a pit toilet that was locked and boarded up. Red-flowering current bloomed on the edge of the old overlook. I walked up to the platform and gazed out at the reservoir valley, where the river braided its way through the old sediments, and young willows were taking over new banks. Swallows danced around me, swinging down into the cool, shaded river canyon then up into bright sunny sky.

The beauty of a reborn river.